Abstract

Prior work has advocated blockchain as a promising tool for organizations across sectors. However, given the ecosystem nature of the technology, blockchain’s benefits may not be fully realized unless it encompasses stakeholders in the focal organization’s value chain. As a result, examining how organizations orchestrate blockchain ecosystems is crucial for organizational research on Blockchain. Our study addresses this question by drawing on the existing literature on ecosystem orchestration. For primary data, we rely on in-depth interviews with senior decision-makers from blockchain technology vendors who were directly involved in these use cases. We inductively analyzed these data and developed visual maps of eight distinct blockchain ecosystems, spanning as many sectors. Our findings can be categorized into two groups. First, our visual maps reveal four distinct archetypes (collation, representation, replacement, and extension) of the intended benefits of blockchain ecosystems. These benefits, we argue, capture the business logic for the stakeholders to engage in a Blockchain ecosystem. Our analysis further reveals a hierarchy between these artifacts. Interestingly, we find that organizations seek these intended benefits through multiple pathways. Second, our study elaborates key decisions in orchestrating blockchain ecosystems. These decisions pertain to (1) adding a stakeholder in the ecosystem, (2) designing the blockchain artifact acting as the digital hub of the ecosystem, and (3) formulating the governance rules between the stakeholders. Collectively, these insights advance the current theoretical and practical understanding of how blockchain ecosystems are orchestrated.

DOI

10.17705/1jais.00984

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